1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an image processing apparatus, and more particularly to a data editing process of image data and audio data.
2. Related Background Art
Nowadays, general users have many opportunities to deal with digital images such as digital still images and digital moving images, which are increasing nowadays because digital cameras, digital video cameras and camera-mounted portable phones are prevailing. It is expected that these apparatuses can take moving images for a long time with a high image quality, because of technical advancement such as an increase in the number of photographing pixels and an increase in the capacity of a recording medium.
Demand is becoming high for video editing of raw materials such as digital images and audio data using a personal computer (PC) or the like, and video editing software of variety types running on PC is actually available.
Some of such video editing software provides a video editing method utilizing time lines, as a user interface for those users skilled in video editing. As shown in FIG. 2, in the time line, image data and audio data are disposed along the time axis for each track (although one track is displayed for each of the image data and audio data in FIG. 2, some types display a plurality of tracks).
Video editing using the time lines can edit very minutely and is suitable for those users requesting for a sophisticated editing function. However, there is the disadvantage that novices of video editing find it difficult to understand the operation.
There is another software which provides a video editing method using a story board, for novices or for rough editing before the editing work using time lines. As shown in FIG. 3, in the story board, representative images of respective image clips are disposed time-sequentially. With this method, video editing can be done by selecting thumbnails of images and rearranging them, so that even novices can understand easily. The editing process using such a story board is disclosed in Japanese Patent Application Laid-open No. 2003-32619 (a corresponding US application was made public; the publication number is US 2003/0016947 A1).
Although the reproduction order of each image clip can be recognized easily on the editing screen of the story board type, there is the problem that it is impossible to know how audio data is superposed on each image clip.